The First Expedition: The Alchemist's Vault

Subeen's imposing stature and deadly axe send the tetrad of fungal beings into fervent chitter chatter. After a moment, one steps forward and makes a gesture to the vine monster's corpse.

"Unt viegar es Ulasht de Gala Khazuul" it speaks in its alien tongue.

The eerie fungal beings seem tentatively calmed by Elodie's gentle words, though they keep a careful distance from Subeen and her gleaming axe and the bright light of Elara's staff.

Three of them creep toward the felled vine-creature, bowing low in deep reverence—so low that the brims of their mushroomed heads graze the onyx stone floor. After three solemn bows, they pull jagged knives from their tattered cloaks and begin to carve slender strips from the vine’s lifeless stalk and stem. One produces a near-spherical glass flask and, with clawed fingers, reaches to the back of the vine creature's head, extracting a pulsating sac of acid. It squeezes the sac, letting its corrosive contents drip into the bottle.

Meanwhile, the fourth creature sidles to the chamber’s exit. It carefully stretches its head through the opening, staring in awe at the night sky as the green and purple bands of the aurora wash over its dilated pupils, casting its gaze in ethereal colours.

Subeen and Elodie stand guard as Elara conducts her ritual. The fungoids hardly take notice, so wrapped up in the harvesting and stargazing. Ten minutes pass, and then the ritual takes hold—an arcane energy floods through Elara, awakening within her the power to understand all languages.

As promised by the arcane instructions in Elara's spellbook, the fungoids' muttering becomes intelligible!

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Trix and Earl venture down the dank northeast passage. Her darkvision reveals that the chamber at its terminus is the blighted remains of a parlour — a once-grand room now ruined by damp and time. The wallpaper peels in brittle flakes, rotting divans swell with decay, and torn curtains hang in shreds - in fact, you suspect they might be the source of the fungoid's robes.

Along the eastern wall, you spot a beautiful arched door wreathed in carved vines and flowers. A passage leads to the south, where you hear an unnerving, distant sound of tools working stone - grinding, drilling, scraping.

ELARA, ELODIE, AND SUBEEN

At the mention of Ulasht, the fungoids look up, at you, as if they had forgotten you existed. "Do you understand us? They other outsiders did not understand us. Ulasht, the Hate Seed ate them, as it ate many of our kind. Thank you for slaying it. It is strange that the metal one does not try to kill you. It tries to kill all the outsiders."

TRIX AND EARL

Trix and Earl stealthily navigate their way across the floor. Trix discovers the ornate door on the eastern wall of the parlour is locked. Rather than a keyhole, he sees a playing card-sized slot nestled in the locking mechanism between the two doors.
The duo quietly slips south, navigating a narrow corridor that leads into a chamber with a wide-open balcony. Peering over the edge, they see a much larger room, 15 feet below, overtaken by dense, thick-stalked plants that have crept across every inch of wall, floor, and ceiling. Dozens upon dozens of man-sized, fibrous pods hang from the plants like grotesque, oversized fruit, with dark shapes shifting and writhing within.

Amid the relentless growth, a new type of construct—small of stature, each hand holding a different tool—struggles to mend a wall being relentlessly cracked by the encroaching vines - definitely the source of the noises you heard earlier.